


messed up with you

by wangja (ohbirds)



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Messy, Underage Smoking, i honestly don't know how to tag this, joohyun and sooyoung are messy, joyrene, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 21:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohbirds/pseuds/wangja
Summary: this is not a relationship. at this point, no one knows who's lying.





	messed up with you

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to tag it appropriately, but if i missed something do let me know.
> 
> i want to specify that everything they do in this fic is consensual and there is mutual consent.
> 
> title is from dysfunctional by kay lei.

“this isn’t a relationship,” joohyun tells her the first time they have sex.

the seedy red light of the tiny hotel room makes the sweat on joohyun’s neck glisten tantalizingly and sooyoung leans forward to bite. joohyun hisses but doesn’t move away, giving sooyoung’s hair a warning tug.

“i know,” replies sooyoung.

sooyoung’s never been good with caution and joohyun is all about it which is why this works so well. 

it started on a cold morning in january when sooyoung walked in on bae joohyun, valedictorian and class president, crying in a stall in the girl’s bathroom.

the fifth floor bathroom is out of order, but girls came here sometimes to skip classes or in sooyoung’s case, have a quick smoke before class. 

“you've never been good with people who cry,” seungwan had told her once which is why instead of comfort sooyoung offers her a cigarette. she waits for joohyun to scoff and deliver one of her scathing diatribes about school rules and smoking hazards when to her (both, judging by the look on the older girl’s face) surprise she takes the stick and hesitantly puts it between her lips, tear-streaked cheeks shining in the weak sunlight streaming through the grimy window, waiting for sooyoung to light it.

other than the tube between those lips, she lights up something else between the two of them.

from there on, it's a thing. sooyoung calls it that because creativity had never been her strong point and she doesn’t know how to classify it.

joohyun wastes no time setting boundaries. in between getting wasted and getting each other off she lays it out; in school, they were mere acquaintances. outside of it, they explored each other’s bodies, often under the influence of some illegal substance sooyoung had procured.

somewhere in the middle of them falling into bad habits, sooyoung falls in love.

she can’t pinpoint the exact moment. but the realization comes to her one afternoon when joohyun is clumsily trying to do her makeup whilst sitting in her lap. they’d (well joohyun, because she had zero tolerance for alcohol and didn’t know how to pace herself) gotten drunk off their asses after driving around in sooyoung’s car for an hour in fraught silence.

it’s almost cliche how reserved, uptight, honor roll student bae joohyun is a clingy and uncoordinated drunk.

“sit still,” mutters sooyoung, trying to suck a hickey on joohyun’s collarbone. joohyun’s stiff white shirt is buttoned too far up for sooyoung’s liking and it takes a while for her to get it open, tugging it off to reveal delicate shoulders and a white cotton bra.

“but i wanna do your makeup,” whines joohyun, waving her arm, not realizing that she was holding the mascara wand upside down. her neatly pinned hair is in a mess from sooyoung running her hands through it. her pale cheeks are stained crimson, glassy eyes shining in the dim rays of sunlight filtering in through the dense foliage where sooyoung had parked the car for privacy.

“am i not pretty without makeup?” teases joy, stealing a kissing from joohyun as she struggles to answer.

joohyun slaps both hands against her cheeks, making sooyoung yelp, pushing them together, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “sooyoungie is pretty even without makeup.” she plants sloppy kisses all over sooyoung’s face, making her scrunch her nose.

“ahan.”

“sooyoungie is pretty without makeup,” repeats joohyun, “to me.” her eyes bore into sooyoung’s with an intensity which is uncharacteristic in her inebriated state. joohyun’s skin feels too hot against hers and sooyoung feels like the air in the car had thinned. joohyun suddenly leans back too far, accidentally falling on the car horn, startling both of them. sooyoung gathers the giggly incoherent senior to her chest, catching sight of her own face in the rear-view mirror, covered in black mascara cake and lipstick marks and a goofy smile that slowly fades as realization dawns on her.

fuck.

-

business goes on as usual. exams come and go, sooyoung passes all her classes while seungwan tuts at her for not trying for more than the bare minimum. her parents lecture her about wasting her talent but the words go in one ear and come out the other, barely leaving a mark. she continues to buy drugs and alcohol from yerim, who surprises her one day by asking if she’s okay.

“i’m fine, why?”

“well, you’ve been buying more and coming back more often. not that i don’t mind, just checking if everything’s fine.”

sooyoung’s not going to mistake yerim’s inquiry for concern. average joes like sooyoung don’t inspire concern, only derision and indifference. she and yerim weren’t close and she didn’t know how she’d react to finding out a loser like sooyoung had fallen for the school’s pride, bae joohyun.

“it’s all good,” she says and pockets the cigarettes, smoking half the pack during her english period. seungwan texts her asking about her whereabouts but she ignores it.

prom week approaches. joohyun is the same as ever, courteous towards sooyoung when she isn’t wasted, rough when she is. sooyoung doesn’t know which she prefers more.

they’re sitting in sooyoung’s bedroom. her parents are rarely ever home, two workaholics who don’t have time for their only child who won’t amount to anything significant in life. after the accidental sex in the love hotel on a whim, joohyun had insisted on finding a ‘safe place’ after that and it had ended up being sooyoung’s bedroom. 

her sheets smell of smoke and the subtle fragrance of joohyun’s perfume. joohyun isn’t much for small talk, getting right to business. sooyoung hates small talk and appreciates this.  
her top and bra have been cast aside, joohyun planting kisses down her body, fingers fumbling on the button of her denim shorts. 

“joohyun-ah,” sooyoung starts, trying not to think about how she would look walking through the doors of the gymnasium with joohyun on her arm

“hm?” joohyun bites down on the flesh of her hip, roughly tugging on the shorts. sooyoung hisses and unbuttons her shorts and takes them off, laying herself bare. she glances down at sooyoung, looking like a dream in her purple silk camisole and black slacks with her hair in a messy bun. her tiny diamond earrings wink at her in the subdued glow of her lamp. 

in that moment sooyoung realizes that she and joohyun will never be more than what they are now. joohyun would graduate high school and go to a top-tier university which would land her a job in a well-known company and get married to someone influential and have two kids with a house in the suburbs while sooyoung would probably drift along until the fates took pity on her and gave her a chance at something meaningful.

“nothing,” she says and distracts joohyun from whatever she was going to say by pushing her down and sticking a hand down her pants.

-

seungwan, sweet, simple and kind-hearted seungwan offers to be her prom date. sooyoung knows seungwan has been asked out by kim sejeong, an underclassman, and that their feelings for each other are mutual, so she refuses. however, she agrees to attend to appease seungwan.

their school boasts a huge gymnasium and its decked out in black and red decorations, as per this year’s theme. light pop music blares from the speakers with the numerous fairy lights illuminating the whole room in a pale glow.

she spends most of the event sitting by the bleachers, only getting up to dance with the people she knows, which aren’t a lot. seungwan and sejeong both shower her with honest compliments, which she accepts with a gracious smile. the velvet off the shoulder black dress was chosen with joohyun in mind. 

sungjae asks her to dance next, followed by do hwan. they both belong to the same theater club as she, and sungjae is an absolute gentleman getting a laugh or two out of her as he spins her across the room. 

when do hwan takes her hand, the dj puts on a slow song which they move along to quietly. he’d been the one to make her join the theater club after catching her looking at the noticeboard in her first year. sooyoung would spend their breaks teasing him about his crush on their drama teacher, mr. ok and then get yelled at by said teacher for not paying attention.

they hadn’t talked much since she started spending time with joohyun. do hwan didn’t complain, their friendship wasn’t like that; you could come and go as you liked. she sighs and rests her chin on his shoulder, catching a glimpse of kang seulgi, cheer-leading captain slow dancing with joohyun. joohyun’s looking at her over seulgi’s shoulder with a look she can’t decipher (she doesn’t want to, is afraid to) and turns away, smiling at do hwan who smiles back.

the stilettos are making her feet hurt and she tells do hwan so, who leads her back to the bleachers and leaves to fetch something to drink. she hisses as she takes off the heels, rubbing at the places where the straps had dug in. her gaze absently wanders around the hall, noticing do hwan slip out after someone who looked a lot like their drama teacher. 

out of the corner of her eye, she hears seulgi approach, cellphone to ear. tall, broad-shouldered and reliable kim seulgi, attractive, athletic and smart. exactly the kind of person joohyun would build a family with.

later, sooyoung will say it was a mistake, that she hadn’t noticed seulgi approach, that she hadn’t stuck out her foot at the same time seulgi had come close, making the girl trip and fall on her face. sooyoung had been the picture of innocence and remorse, apologizing profusely and feeling only a little bad when seulgi waved her off with a kind smile, saying that it was fine.

she’s well aware of joohyun’s glare at the back of her neck as she slips out to go to the bathroom, smiling to herself as she re-applies her lipstick, the red color shining bright in the fluorescent lighting.

the door flies open just then and joohyun walks in, exuding the elegance and fierceness of an austere queen in her jade velvet dress that swept the floor. she locks the door and pushes sooyoung up against the wall, her purse dropping to the floor, causing the contents of it to scatter, the noise echoing in the silence.

“this,” said joohyun, pulling the tie out of her hair and making it cascade down her shoulders, “is not a relationship.”

sooyoung smiles. “i know.”

-


End file.
